(compiled by Lenora Inez Brown and Jonathan Dorf)
came across this on the dramaturgy listserv and couldn’t resist sharing with everyone. Any additons? Add them in the commenst section… e
GREEK DRAMA
Euripides
Electra
Iphigenia at Aulis
Alcestis
The Bacchae
Medea
Sophocles
The Oedipus cycle
Electra
Aristophanes. The Frogs
Aeschylus. The Orestia
Aristotle’s Poetics
ROMAN DRAMA
Plautus
Seneca
The Menechami
MEDIEVAL DRAMA
The Second Shepherd Play
The Wakefield Mysteries
Hrsovitha (first female playwright known in Western canon)
RENAISSANCE DRAMA
Shakespeare
Hamlet
MacBeth
Romeo and Juliet
Richard III
Measure for Measure
Midsummer’s Night Dream
King Lear
The Tempest
Merry Wives of Windsor
Henry V
Ben Jonson
Bartholomew Fair
Volpone
JACOBEAN DRAMA
Webster. The Duchess of Malfi
Middleton
The Changeling
Women Beware Women
Marlowe
Dr. Faustus
Edward the Second
Goldoni. A Servant of Two Masters
FRENCH DRAMA
Moliere
Tartuffe
The Misanthrope
Corneille. El Cid
Feydeau. A Flea in her Ear
Racine. Phaedra
Dion Boucicult
The Octoroon
The Shagraun
Alfred Jarry. The Ubu Plays
SPANISH DRAMA
Calderon. Life is a Dream
Lope de Vega. Fuente Ovejuna
BELGIAN DRAMA
Maeterlink
The Stranger/The Intruder
The Blue Bird
RESTORATION DRAMA
Sheridan
Congreve
Aphra Behn. The Rover
Goldsmith. She Stoops to Conquer
Wycherly
The Country Wife
The Man of Mode
SCANDANAVIAN DRAMA
Henrik Ibsen
A Doll’s House
Peer Gynt
Hedda Gabler
Ghosts
The Masterbuilder
August Strindberg
Miss Julie
The Father
A Dream Play
GERMAN DRAMA
Schiller
Goethe
RUSSIAN DRAMA
Stanislavski. An Actor Prepares
Anton Chekhov
The Cherry Orchard
Three Sisters
The Seagull
Uncle Vanya
Gorky. The Lower Depths
EARLY AMERICAN DRAMA
Clifford Odets
Golden Boy
Eugene O’Neill
Mourning Becomes Electra
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Iceman Cometh
Susan Glaspell
Trifles
Gertrude Stein
Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters
T.S. Eliot
Murder in the Cathedral
The Cocktail Party
20th CENTURY BRITISH DRAMA
Oscar Wilde
Importance of Being Earnest
Salome
Noel Coward
Blithe Spirit
Private Lives
POSTMODERN DRAMA
Beckett
Waiting for Godot
Endgame
Krapp’s Last Tape
Happy Days
Pirandello
Enrico IV
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Brecht
Mother Courage
Caucasian Chalk Circle
Good Woman of Szechuan
Essays:
On Alienation
On Epic theatre
Durrenmatt. The Visit of the Old Lady
Ionesco
The Chairs
The Lesson
Rhinoceros
Sartre. No Exit (Huis Clos)
Genet
The Blacks
The Maids
The Balcony
Artaud
Cenci
Jet of Blood
Theatre and Its Double
Boal. Theatre of the Oppressed
BRITISH DRAMA, Post WWII
Alan Ayckbourn
The Norman Conquests
House and Garden
David Hare
Slag
Plenty
Pravda
The Secret Rapture
The Blue Room
The Vertical Hour
Edward Bond. Saved
Arnold Wesker. Roots
Osborne. Look Back in Anger
Joe Orton
What the Butler Saw
Loot
Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Arcadia
Rock and Roll
Harold Pinter
The Homecoming
Betrayal
The Birthday Party
The Dumbwaiter
Caryl Churchill
Top Girls
Cloud Nine
Far Away
Sarah Kane
4.48 psychosis
Blasted
NIGERIAN DRAMA
Wole Soyinka. Death and the King’s Horseman
SOUTH AFRICAN DRAMA
Athol Fugard
Blood Knot
Master Harold and the Boys
The Road to Mecca
Boseman and Lena
GERMAN DRAMA
Heiner Muller. Hamletmachine
Buchner
Woyzeck
Danton’s Death
20th CENTURY AMERICAN DRAMA
Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman
A View from the Bridge
Thornton Wilder. Our Town
Edward Albee
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe
Zoo Story
Three Tall Women
A Delicate Balance
The Goat
Adrienne Kennedy
Funnyhouse of a Negro
She Talks to Beethoven
Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White
Ohio State Murders
Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Glass Menagerie
Sweet Bird of Youth
William Inge
Bus Stop
Picnic
Come Back Little Sheba
Neil Simon
The Odd Couple
Brighten Beach Memoirs
Sam Shepard
True West
Buried Child
Curse of the Starving Class
Tooth of Crime
John Patrick Shanley
Doubt
Danny and the Deep Blue Sea
Ntozake Shange. For colored girls who considered suicide when the rainbow isn’t enuf
Charles Ludlam. The Mystery of Irma Vep
William Alfred. Hogan’s Goat
David Mamet
American Buffalo
Glengarry Glenn Ross
Oleanna
Speed-the-plow
Amiri Baraka. Dutchman
Wendy Wasserstein
Uncommon Women
The Heidi Chronicles
Marsha Norman. ’Night Mother
Israel Horowitz. Indian Wants the Bronx
Anna Deavere Smith
Fires in the Mirror
Twilight
House Arrest: The Search for American Character
Lynn Nottage
Crumbs From the Table of Joy
Fabulation
Intimate Apparel
August Wilson
Fences
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Piano Lesson
A.R. Gurney
The Dining Room
Sylvia
Horton Foote
Young Man from Atlanta
Trip to Bountiful
Lanford Wilson
The Fifth of July
Burn This
David Rabe
Hurlyburly
Streamers
Tony Kushner
Angels in America
Homebody/Kabul
William Hoffman. As Is
Larry Kramer. The Normal Heart
Jose Rivera
Marisol
Cloud Tectonics
References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot
Paula Vogel
How I Learned to Drive
Hot L Baltimore
The Long Christmas Ride Home
Suzan-Lori Parks
Topdog/Underdog
In The Blood
The America Play
Sarah Ruhl
Eurydice
Dead Man’s Cell phone
David Henry Hwang
M. Butterfly
Yellowman
Nilo Cruz. Anna and the Tropics
Maria Irene Fornes
Mud
The Successful Life of Three
Fefu and her Friends
Steven Dietz
Lonely Planet
God’s Country
Robert Schenkkan. The Kentucky Cycle
Christopher Durang
The Marriage of Bette and Boo
Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You
Lorraine Hansberry
A Raisin in the Sun
The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window
Carson McCullers. A Member of the Wedding
Milcha Sanchez Scott. Roosters
George C. Wolfe. The Colored Museum
IRISH DRAMA
Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman
Pygmalian
Major Barbara
Mrs. Warren’s Profession
Heartbreak House
Martin McDonaugh
The Cripple of Inishmaan
The Pillowman
The Beauty Queen of Lenane
Conor McPherson
The Weir
Dublin Carol
Shining City
CHILDREN’S THEATRE
Suzan Zeder
The Mother Hicks series
Wiley and the Hairy Man
Laurie Brooks
The Wrestling Season
The Selkie
David Saar. The Yellow Boat
James Still
And Then They Came for Me
The Velveteen Rabbit
Y York (Many published texts)
Barry Kornhauser. This is Not a Pipe Dream
Jose Cruz Gonzalez
The Highest Heaven
Two Donuts
Lowell Swortzel. Around the World in 21 Plays: Theatre for Young Audiences
Coleman A. Jennings. Theatre for Young Audiences: 20 Great Plays for Children
OTHER TEXTS
David Ball. Backwards and Forwards
Declan Donnellan. The Actor and the Target
Anne Bogart. The Viewpoints Book
Liz Lerman. The Critical Response Process
]]>November 4, 2008 - From Hyde Park, Chicago
I am writing on election morning in Hyde Park, Chicago, Barack Obama’s very own neighborhood. We are in tech today, Election Day, for Radio Macbeth at the beautiful Court Theatre on the campus of the University of Chicago. I am full of thoughts and feelings about the world we inhabit and where we are headed. How will we function productively in the future, this very particular future we are headed into? The disorienting sensation of these past weeks is oddly familiar. In the wake of shattering worldwide economic and political events we find a certain silence emerging from what the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan calls “the real.” Our ship has slammed up against the shores of “the real.” The real is what lies behind our daily busyness, our symbols and our imaginative flights. Markets dive, jobs are cut, consumers stop
consuming and the assumptions that we carved out to describe our futures are in jeopardy. Silence arrives because familiar words, sentences and paragraphs are suddenly not sufficient to quell our anxieties.
The market culture and its manufactured desires and materialistic promises have failed miserably. The unregulated markets resulted in a ravaged landscape of unpaid for despair. In this uncertain and cataclysmic climate, the creative impulse and the art experience is essential. In art we find a direction. The capacity to see, to perceive the world through another’s eyes, to empathize, is a vital sign of a civilized
culture. To touch upon the unsaid and find articulate shapes for our present anxieties is the goal of our work together. The myth of economic progress as the answer to our baseline problems is simply not true. What else can there be?
I have come to understand that the creative act is ultimately action against natural human tendencies. Left to natural devices, human energy and endeavor moves towards entropy and disintegration. Our lives lead inevitably to decay and death. In the morning we are weighted down by the burden of sleep, requiring a supreme effort to arise and join the world. The end of a gesture, when not treated with an artistic attack of acceleration, tends to die out. The artistic impulse, in contrast to the entropic direction of a life cycle, rises above the tendency towards death and negation. The artist searches for lightness and for exactitude in the face of rot and decay. Fueled by curiosity, energy and hope, we enter the darkness. We accept the darkness and in that acceptance sometimes we discover a thin vein of light.
-Anne Bogart
]]>By Kenneth Jones
June 23, 2008
In the great wilderness of non-traditional theatre in the United States, a tree has fallen. The board of directors of the ambitious, Tony Award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis, MN, voted to list the theatre’s headquarters for sale and to shut down the arts group as currently organized.
The announcement was made June 22. Included in the decision is a planned significant reduction in artistic and administrative staff, effective July 31, 2008.
“We have reached these decisions with great regret,” stated board president Bruce Neary. “However, our fiduciary responsibilities to our artists, our staff, our donors and our creditors dictate this action. We are listing the building for sale in order to fully satisfy our creditors.”
Neary added, “The board is committed to an orderly shutdown, including satisfying all existing rental obligations through Sept. 30, 2008.”
Jeune Lune has provided Minneapolis-St. Paul audiences with visually stunning, mind-stirring work — often movement-oriented, projection-kissed and theatrically multi-disciplinary — since 1978. Among popular or lauded titles were its early comedy hit Yang Zen Froggs and the nationally acclaimed Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream, plus popular re-imaginings of operas, including The Magic Flute, Carmen, Maria de Buenos Aires, Don Juan Giovanni and Figaro.
The company won a Tony Award in 2005 as Best Regional Theatre, and has been recognized as one of the country’s most innovative and visionary artistic institutions.
Dominic Papatola, theatre critic at the Saint Paul Pioneer Press since 1999, and an observer of Jeune Lune’s work since the early ’90s, told Playbill.com on June 23, “At its best, Theatre de la Jeune Lune was a model for what theatre in the Twin Cities — and, I would argue, throughout the country — could be. The company not only was visionary, but it remained true to its vision; challenging audiences as it delighted them. Through their partnerships with companies across the country, they breathed new life into the American regional theatre movement. The Lunies could experiment relentlessly, and they weren’t afraid to fail. Their ambition and their daring gave license to a generation of theatre practitioners here and elsewhere to stretch their imaginations.”
TJL’s two local productions this year, The Deception and Fishtank, both exceeded box office expectations and their recent tour of Figaro, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre, received great critical acclaim, according to the troupe.
Dominique Serrand, artistic director stated, “It has been an amazing 30 years. Few theatre companies last as long. We never sought nor desired to be an institution. Our home was always intended to be a playground in which we could gather with other adventurous souls and create the unimaginable. We have benefited enormously from the incredible generosity of this community, and especially all of the artists without whom we would never have survived this long or created as much. We can never thank them enough.”
It is the intent of the board and staff “to explore strategies to enable the creation of art in the future.”
Serrand added, “Today, we begin imagining a new way of working. Building upon our artistic legacy, and facing a different future, we are exploring ways to reinvent an agile, nomadic, entrepreneurial theatre with a new name that will create essential and innovative art for today’s changing audience.”
Theatre de la Jeune Lune was formed in 1978 by École LeCoq graduates Barbra Berlovitz, Vincent Gracieux, and Dominique Serrand. They were soon joined by Robert Rosen and eventually Steve Epp and other collaborators. Over the past 30 years they have created nearly 100 productions, performed for hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the United States and in France, but primarily in their home of Minneapolis.
A commercial broker for the sale has not been selected. The board of directors will establish a committee to manage the sale at its regular board meeting of June 25, 2008.
In a letter posted on TJL’s website, Serrand stated, “For the first 14 years we were itinerant, making the most of any venue we found ourselves in. Then in 1992, with an amazing groundswell of support, we purchased and renovated the Allied Van Lines building in the Minneapolis warehouse district. We excavated the interior of this historic building to create a stunningly innovative and award winning performance space, opening our new artistic home to the public on November 18th of that year.
“Sixteen years later we are faced with an excruciating decision. With the organization burdened by mounting and unmanageable debt, the Board of Directors has voted to put Jeune Lune’s home up for sale. After much soul searching and extensive fundraising and debt management efforts, we have determined it to be the only prudent and fiscally responsible choice. What has been acclaimed, as one of the most striking and unique theatre spaces in the country will go dark. It is a huge loss, a loss for us, for all of the artists who work with us, for our audience and for the community at large, both locally and nationally.
“And with the building, we have decided that the time has come to bid adieu to the theatre ensemble we have all known as Jeune Lune.
“We have always believed that the making of theatre is an important and essential act. We have always believed in the power of theatre to provoke, inspire, and excite. We have always created our work for and because of our audience. Over the years we have cultivated a loyal audience locally, regionally and nationally. We have garnered numerous awards and accolades, and of course at times we have elicited criticism and consternation. We have benefited enormously from the support of foundations, corporations, state and national organizations, all those who have served as board members, staff and volunteers, the incredible generosity of thousands of individuals, and especially all of the artists. Without all of you we would never have survived this long or created as much. We can never thank you enough.”
It has been an amazing thirty years. Few theatre companies last as long. We never sought nor desired to be an institution. Our home was always intended to be a playground in which we could gather with other adventurous souls and create the unimaginable. A place in which to grow, change and evolve. The theatrical experience is an event truly of the moment — immediate, fleeting and ephemeral. Yet in the space of that moment something takes place that is transformative to the human spirit and remains indelible in our memory — the stuff that dreams are made of, the stuff we carry with us forever. We hope you will treasure well the memory of Jeune Lune.
But, as this story ends, a new one begins. We live to create. To do what we know best, what the artist’s responsibility in society has always been — to invent, to dream, to imagine.
“Starting today, we begin imagining a new way of working. What should a theatre-generating organization of the 21st century look like? How can artists create truly groundbreaking art in a fast changing world? Times have changed and so have we. Building upon our artistic legacy, and facing a different future, we are exploring ways to reinvent an agile, nomadic, entrepreneurial theatre with a new name. One that can embrace the concentric circles of artists we have worked with over the years. Together we will create essential and innovative theatre for today’s changing audience. It’s an exciting new journey and we hope you’ll join us with your support, with your presence, with your belief. Fear not: the art is alive and coming soon to a theatre near you. Keep in touch.”
For more information, visit www.jeunelune.org.
]]>
Melissa Bailey’s May breakdown of all the bids the city received in response to its Request for Qualification (RFQ): here. Enjoy…
]]>In my current work in kinetic sculpture, I am trying to concentrate on the movement, rather than the object. I take it as an article of faith that the air around us moves in ways which are organic, whimsical, and unpredictable. I therefore assume that if I were to abdicate the design to the wind, the work would take on these same qualities.
The engineer in me wants to minimize friction and inertia to make the air visible. The architect studies matters of scale and proportion. The navigator and sailor want to know the strength and direction of the wind. The artist wants to understand its changing shape.
Meanwhile, the child wants to play.
Who is Tim Prentice, you may ask. Well, if you don’t know, merely look outside of Long Wharf’s mainstage lobby at the kinetic sculpture carving shape and light against the wind. Click on for a bio, or just go straight to Tim’s website. (Thanks to Keith Hyatt for the heads up on this one…)
Tim Prentice, kinetic sculptor, received a Masters Degree in architecture from Yale in 1960 and founded the award-winning firm of Prentice and Chan in 1965.
Ten years later, he established a studio in Cornwall, Connecticut to design and fabricate kinetic sculpture. His corporate clients include American Express, Bank of America, Mobil, AT&T., and Hewlett-Packard. In the last few years he has completed installations in Japan, Korea, Northern Ireland, and Australia.
His work grows out of the tradition of Alexander Calder and George Rickey, but in a recent review the critic Grace Glueck stated that his work’s ‘gently assertive character is very much his own.’ He shows with Maxwell Davidson in New York, and his work is found in hundreds of private collections.
]]>Up and Then Down
The lives of elevators.
by Nick Paumgarten
The longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999. White, a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week, working late on a special supplement, had just watched the Braves beat the Mets on a television in the office pantry. Now he wanted a cigarette. He told a colleague he’d be right back and, leaving behind his jacket, headed downstairs.
The magazine’s offices were on the forty-third floor of the McGraw-Hill Building, an unadorned tower added to Rockefeller Center in 1972. When White finished his cigarette, he returned to the lobby and, waved along by a janitor buffing the terrazzo floors, got into Car No. 30 and pressed the button marked 43. The car accelerated. It was an express elevator, with no stops below the thirty-ninth floor, and the building was deserted. But after a moment White felt a jolt. The lights went out and immediately flashed on again. And then the elevator stopped.
The control panel made a beep, and White waited a moment, expecting a voice to offer information or instructions. None came. He pressed the intercom button, but there was no response. He hit it again, and then began pacing around the elevator. After a time, he pressed the emergency button, setting off an alarm bell, mounted on the roof of the elevator car, but he could tell that its range was limited. Still, he rang it a few more times and eventually pulled the button out, so that the alarm was continuous. Some time passed, although he was not sure
how much, because he had no watch or cell phone. He occupied himself with thoughts of remaining calm and decided that he’d better not do anything drastic, because, whatever the malfunction, he thought it unwise to jostle the car, and because he wanted to be (as he thought, chuckling to himself) a model trapped employee. He hoped, once someone
came to get him, to appear calm and collected. He did not want to be scolded for endangering himself or harming company property. Nor did he want to be caught smoking, should the doors suddenly open, so he didn’t touch his cigarettes. He still had three, plus two Rolaids, which he worried might dehydrate him, so he left them alone. As the emergency bell rang and rang, he began to fear that it might somehow—electricity? friction? heat?—start a fire. Recently, there had been a small fire in the building, rendering the elevators unusable. The Business Week
staff had walked down forty-three stories. He also began hearing unlikely oscillations in the ringing: aural hallucinations. Before long, he began to contemplate death.
[Read on.]
]]>Spain’s ‘Mum’ minister takes critics by storm
By Elizabeth Nash in Madrid
Monday, 21 April 2008
Carme Chacon, Spain’s first female defence minister, appointed controversially last week when seven months’ pregnant, silenced her critics at the weekend by making a surprise 24-hour visit to meet Spanish troops in Afghanistan.
The unannounced trip was criticised by some for potentially putting her child at risk. But Ms Chacon said her pregnancy was an easy one, and told journalists during a two-hour stopover in Kuwait “that she would never put her child’s future at risk”. Asked if she was tired by the 10-hour flight from Madrid, she replied; “The election campaign was harder, and longer”.
Last week, the Socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, appointed a mostly female cabinet.
Ms Chacon said that she decided to go ahead with the trip only after taking medical advice on Friday. A gynaecologist, an anaesthetist and a paediatrician accompanied her on a journey that included a three-hour transfer in a notoriously cold Hercules transport plane.
Having made history by being the first woman to review Spain’s armed forces last week, Ms Chacon repeated the operation in Herat on Saturday where she reviewed not only Spain’s troops but Italian, Albanian and Slovene forces participating in peacekeeping operations in the area.
The minister wore a white smock, loose trousers and military boots, and was serious and relaxed, according to journalists who travelled with her. At no point did she affect a military air as she received salutes from the troops.
“Chacon moves on to the attack in Afghanistan,” wrote the daily ABC, a conservative newspaper that a week ago had sneered at Mr Zapatero’s “battalion of seamstresses”.
“Chacon fulfilled her role as Defence Minister, and showed she could command the armed forces despite her circumstances,” wrote the male reporter in the equally conservative El Mundo newspaper. “The soldiers said they were delighted with her; not one made any criticism.
“They stood to attention as she passed, and she responded with endless questions about their work.” Ms Chacon says that she plans to visit Spanish troops stationed in Lebanon, Bosnia and Kosovo before her son is born in June.
As Spaniards learnt about Ms Chacon’s trip from their Sunday papers, they could hear the new Environment Minister, Elena Espinosa, explaining on the radio – in an interview with a female journalist – exactly what emergency measures she was taking to solve Catalonia’s water crisis.
Ms Espinosa had hastily convened and chaired a summit of environment ministers from all Spain’s autonomous regions on Saturday, in an attempt to reconcile those who had water with those who had not. “We will not transfer water from the Ebro river,” she said calmly, and added that the stampede to urbanise parched regions would be halted in favour of “more sustainable alternatives”.
To this British listener the exchange seemed as unaffected and sensible as any on the BBC’s Today programme. But that such controversial, technically sophisticated discussions could be conducted by authoritative women in an atmosphere of complete normality, in Spain, revealed the political significance of what has happened.
Comments by Italy’s new President Silvio Berlusconi about Spain’s cabinet being “too pink” and “difficult to control”, coupled with photos of him aiming an imaginary gun at a female journalist, have produced incredulity and derision among Spaniards.
“This is the mentality that produces violence against women,” observed one commentator, admittedly a woman, in a radio discussion yesterday. The men on the panel agreed. Probably not all Spanish men are so persuaded. But at least they know that if they harbour machista thoughts, they had better for the moment keep them to themselves.
]]>BLUEST EYE / Michael Wyant, Technical Supervisor, talks about the challeneges of transferring THE BLUEST EYE from Hartford Stage to Long Wharf.
]]>March 4, 2008
By MOTOKO RICH
In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.
The problem is that none of it is true.
Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.
Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published “Love and Consequences,” is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Ms. Seltzer’s book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Ore., where she currently lives.
In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview from her home on Monday, Ms. Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.
“For whatever reason, I was really torn and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to,” Ms. Seltzer said. “I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it’s an ego thing — I don’t know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.”
The revelations of Ms. Seltzer’s mendacity came in the wake of the news last week that a Holocaust memoir, “Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years” by Misha Defonseca, was a fake, and perhaps more notoriously, two years ago James Frey, the author of a best-selling memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” admitted that he had made up or exaggerated details in his account of his drug addiction and recovery.
Ms. Seltzer’s story started unraveling last Thursday after she was profiled in the House & Home section of The New York Times. The article appeared alongside a photograph of Ms. Seltzer and her 8-year-old daughter, Rya. Ms. Seltzer’s older sister, Cyndi Hoffman, saw the article and called Riverhead to tell editors that Ms. Seltzer’s story was untrue.
“Love and Consequences” immediately hit a note with many reviewers. Writing in The Times, Michiko Kakutani praised the “humane and deeply affecting memoir,” but noted that some of the scenes “can feel self-consciously novelistic at times.” In Entertainment Weekly, Vanessa Juarez wrote that “readers may wonder if Jones embellishes the dialogue” but went on to extol the “powerful story of resilience and unconditional love.”
In the vividly told book, Ms. Seltzer wrote about her African-American foster brothers, Terrell and Taye, who joined the Bloods gang when they were 11 and 13. She chronicled her experiences making drug deliveries for gang leaders at age 13 and how she was given her first gun as a birthday present when she was 14. Ms. Seltzer told The Times last week, “One of the first things I did once I started making drug money was to buy a burial plot.”
Sarah McGrath, the editor at Riverhead who worked with Ms. Seltzer for three years on the book, said she was stunned to discover that the author had lied.
“It’s very upsetting to us because we spent so much time with this person and we felt such sympathy for her and she would talk about how she didn’t have any money or any heat and we completely bought into that and thought we were doing something good by bringing her story to light,” Ms. McGrath said.
“There’s a huge personal betrayal here as well as a professional one,” she said.
Ms. Seltzer said she had been writing about her friends’ experiences for years in creative-writing classes and on her own before a professor asked her to speak with Inga Muscio, an author who was then working on a book about racism. Ms. Seltzer talked about what she portrayed as her experiences and Ms. Muscio used some of those accounts in her book. Ms. Muscio then referred Ms. Seltzer to her agent, Faye Bender, who read some pages that Ms. Seltzer had written and encouraged the young author to write more.
In April 2005, Ms. Bender submitted about 100 pages to four publishers. Ms. McGrath, then at Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster, agreed to a deal for what she said was less than $100,000. When Ms. McGrath moved to Riverhead in 2006, she moved Ms. Seltzer’s contract.
Over the course of three years, Ms. McGrath, who is the daughter of Charles McGrath, a writer at large at The Times, worked closely with Ms. Seltzer on the book. “I’ve been talking to her on the phone and getting e-mails from her for three years and her story never has changed,” Ms. McGrath said. “All the details have been the same. There never have been any cracks.”
In a telephone interview, Ms. Seltzer’s sister, Ms. Hoffman, 47, said: “It could have and should have been stopped before now.” Referring to the publisher, she added: “I don’t know how they do business, but I would think that protocol would have them doing fact-checking.”
Ms. Seltzer said she had met some gang members during a short stint she said she spent at “Grant” high school “in the Valley.” (A Google search identifies Ulysses S. Grant High School, a school on 34 acres in the Valley Glen neighborhood in the east-central San Fernando Valley.) “It opened my mind to the fact that not everybody is as they are portrayed on the news,” she said. “Everything’s not that black and white or gray or brown.”
She said that although she returned to Campbell Hall, she remained in touch with people she met at Grant and then began working with groups that were trying to stop gang violence. She said that even after she moved to Oregon, she would often venture to South-Central Los Angeles to spend time with friends in the gang world.
In the book, she describes her foster mother, Big Mom, an African-American woman who raised four grandchildren and a foster brother, Terrell, who was gunned down by Crips right outside her foster mother’s home.
Ms. Seltzer, who writes in an author’s note to the book that she “combined characters and changed names, dates, and places,” said in an interview that these characters and incidents were in part based on friends’ experiences. “I had a couple of friends who had moms who were like my mom and that’s where Big Mom comes from — from being in the house all the time and watching what goes on. One of my best friend’s little brother was killed two years ago, shot,” she said.
Ms. Seltzer added that she wrote the book “sitting at the Starbucks” in South-Central, where “I would talk to kids who were Black Panthers and kids who were gang members and kids who were not.”
“I’m not saying like I did it right,” Ms. Seltzer said. “I did not do it right. I thought I had an opportunity to make people understand the conditions that people live in and the reasons people make the choices from the choices they don’t have.” Ms. McGrath said that she had numerous conversations with Ms. Seltzer about being truthful. “She seems to be very, very naïve,” Ms. McGrath said. “There was a way to do this book honestly and have it be just as compelling.”
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